«CONTRAPPOSTO | COUNTERPLACE», 2025

With: Edna Schönenberger, Giuliana Beya Dridi, Hermes Schneider, ianic, _tS, Kalil Bat, Len Pip Mettler

Seven performers move through Kunstmuseum Basel Neubau, guiding the audience from the underground floor upwards, bringing forth latent choreographies within the context of the museum’s architecture and collection. For CONTRAPPOSTO│COUNTERPLACE, Izidora I LETHE looks at one of the oldest public collections in the world as a repository of collective knowledge (including the unaccounted poses, positions, and postures therein). As such, LETHE engages the museum as a vivid (counter-)place, where the complexity of history and the present coexist in motion, rest, sound, and silence.

Going through bodily compositions from the 17th century to the present, the performers quote and “unquote”, tracing how our very intimate movements are collectively constructed—more than we often notice—and how bodies, simultaneously, shake and refuse conventions perpetually. The performers transform stillness into movement and presence into resonance, weaving poetic reflections on conviviality, vulnerability, and shared resistances.

The false or free translation of “contrapposto”—a term used in sculpture to describe the perfect balancing act—here reverberates into “counterplace”. The (un_)balancing act between exposure, protection, and construction of culture is temporarily revealed through vulnerable trembling and the fortitude of presence.

Fotos: Karin Salathé